The National Basketball Association’s offseason tipped off this month with a trailblazer for minority women in the front office starting her own venture.
Nicole Duckett, general counsel for the Los Angeles Clippers, is leaving the team this month to launch a boutique legal consulting firm for an athletic clientele.
Duckett’s LinkedIn profile identifies her as the first and only Black woman to serve as the top lawyer for an NBA team. Duckett, who spent more than 15 years as a litigator at three law firms in Los Angeles—class action firm Milberg, Mayer Brown, and now-defunct Thelen—joined the Clippers as the franchise’s top lawyer in 2015.
Her exit comes exactly a year after the club’s ownership hired Alexander Winsberg, a former general counsel for Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Angels.
Winsberg was brought on to help skipper an arena project borne out of a long legal battle between billionaire Clippers owner Steven Ballmer and James Dolan, owner of the NBA’s New York Knicks. The Clippers were sold for $2 billion in 2014 to Ballmer, a longtime former CEO of Microsoft Corp.
Duckett and Winsberg didn’t respond to requests for comment. Clippers spokesman Chris Wallace and Ashley Dos Santos, a spokeswoman for Duckett, confirmed Duckett’s departure but declined to discuss the personnel change.
An online Clippers staff directory identifies Winsberg as chief legal officer for the Intuit Dome, the privately funded $1.8 billion arena. The team broke ground on its new home last year and is expected to move in before the 2024-25 NBA season.
Winsberg updated his LinkedIn profile this week to show that he’s now legal chief for the Clippers, Intuit Dome, and Forum Entertainment. Ballmer paid $400 million in 2020 to buy The Forum, a former home for the rival Los Angeles Lakers, from Dolan.
Switching Lanes
Duckett isn’t the only NBA lawyer looking elsewhere.
Charlotte Hornets general counsel Tamara Daniels left the club in March after a little more than a year on the job. Daniels was hired by the team last year after serving as the top lawyer for the National Hockey League’s Vegas Golden Knights.
Daniels and the Hornets didn’t respond to a request for comment about her departure, which was confirmed by an update to her LinkedIn profile and an auto-response message from her Hornets email.
Daniels’ email was redirected to associate general counsel Shannon Finucane, a former in-house lawyer for Minor League Baseball who the Hornets hired last year. Finucane, who also didn’t respond to a request for comment, joined the Hornets after the club’s former assistant general counsel Marcus LeBeouf left last year to become the first-ever general counsel for the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks.
The Hornets welcomed aboard Daniels after the team’s longtime former legal chief, Joseph Pierce, was hired by Home Depot Inc. co-founder and billionaire Arthur Blank to be general counsel for the entity he controls that owns the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer’s Atlanta United.
Despite Daniels’ departure, the Hornets remain well-stocked with legal talent. The team’s assistant general manager, David Duquette, is a former lawyer for the club, whose manager of basketball strategy Jon Moul is also an assistant club counsel.
Fred Whitfield, a president, vice chairman, and alternate governor for the Hornets, is an attorney and former player agent who previously served as director of business and legal affairs for the Jordan Brand, an entity controlled by majority Hornets owner and NBA great Michael Jordan. Whitfield didn’t respond to a request for comment about the team’s legal leadership plans after Daniels.
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